Mr. Barker was a very tall, very thin man. If he was alive today, he’d be an internet meme. His height was bad enough for a child like me who was small for his age, but compounding his looming creepiness was a permanently ghostly white complexion, emphasised by a fierce bluish beard shadow even at the start of the day. Steely, dark eyes peered out malevolently at the world as he bestrode the corridors and revelled in his power as the not-quite-but-almost boss of the school. He was never seen to smile (not even if a child tripped and injured themselves right in front of him), and the consensus was that he never blinked. Rumour also had it that he was married, but kept his wife locked up in the house when he was at work. How the heck the person who started that one came up with it, I’ll never know - but I believed it for several years. He was that kind of man.

Mr. Barker always, always dressed in a brown suit with drainpipe trousers. The suit – made of high quality rayon - rustled slightly as he walked, the interlocking fibres generating thousands of volts of static electricity. Every ten or twelve paces, he would pause to ground himself on a metal window frame or door handle, the pain of each static shock strengthening his resolve to never stop hating the children under his supervision. Mr. Barker, through word and deed, was the living manifestation of the grim reaper whom we all feared. Following my innate sense of self-preservation, I kept my distance and allowed my terror of him to quietly and steadily develop.

Until…

At one time, together with a couple of my friends, I took to spending time inside the classroom at lunchtimes, where we would read, tell each other silly stories, and draw. It was simple stuff, innocent and utterly harmless. Staying indoors wasn’t exactly banned, but was definitely frowned upon (the staff didn’t bother with ‘gently discouraging’ anything, and instead leapt straight into frowning disapproval), since the merciful Lord’s fresh air was deemed to be good for us. Other teachers had seen the three of us making our own fun and had quietly warned us to not make any noise, but otherwise left us alone, since we were doing no harm and not actually breaking any rules.

One day we all decided (for the same kind of reasons that kids will stand in the shower with their raincoat on, or try – just once - to drink milk through their nose) to sit underneath one of the classroom tables and read a favourite story from the library shelf. It felt a little like camping – it was fun! For a while we quietly giggled and chortled at something very innocent, but were interrupted by the shock of a huge BANG on the top of the table. For the first time in my life, I farted with fright. I looked up to see – to my horror – a pair of brown drainpipe trouser legs standing motionless next to the table, an occasional crackle of high voltage sparks playing across the surface of them. Mr. Barker, the seeker of all things sinful, had found us.

His curiously high-pitched and hoarse voice reached out to us like a whiplash; “Come OUT of there at ONCE!”. The indignation in his tone was palpable, as was the magnetic field being generated by his suit. We didn’t even look at one another, so deep was our terror. Trembling, we emerged from underneath the table to stand, huddled together for protection, under the distant gaze of the fearsome electrified man. Above him boiled and rolled a black cloud, from which lightning bolts flickered and jabbed. Obviously he hadn’t grounded himself in the last few minutes…either that, or I was hallucinating. “WHAT do you mean…” he hissed, baring yellow, narrow teeth in oversized gums; “…by this BIZARRE behaviour?”. I was nine, and had absolutely no idea what the question actually meant. Nobody had ever thrown the word ‘bizarre’ towards me before. As for what did I mean…well…I didn’t mean anything! I was just having fun. I doubled the amplitude of my trembling. “WELL?” roared the mighty pipe cleaner, flaring his impressive nostrils. My dad had big nostrils, with bits of hair poking out of them, but Mr. Barker had him beaten on that count by several dozen as far as I could tell. I wondered why I was noticing that detail at such a dangerous moment. “I don’t know sir.” a small, reedy voice said. I was a little shocked to realize that it had found its way out of my own mouth.

I knew instinctively that – feeble, contrite voice or not - this was a poor response. He flared his mighty air intakes again; “YOU DON’T KNOW?” he bellowed (as well as he could, with his sinister, hoarse voice), his eyes widening to the point where we could almost see them. “You don’t KNOW? How can you not KNOW? What on EARTH would lead you to…to…sit under a table at…at…lunch hour?” The latter part of the question was delivered with an almost hysterical emphasis and prompted me to wonder if he thought that sitting under a table at some other time of the day was perfectly acceptable. Worryingly, I could see some white, foamy spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. I suspected that I needed to stop noticing details such as that, but I took the spittle to be a bad sign, and allowed my bottom lip to quiver accordingly. To my left, my friend Paul grabbed the leadership role and burst into tears, to the accompaniment of soft sobs and the gentle vibration of his mop of blonde, curly hair.

The fearsome man croaked again, warming to his task now that he had caused some real distress; “I have never come across behaviour of this kind before; I find it quite incomprehensible.” I found his sentences pretty hard to understand too, but I decided not to mention it, as well leaving out my thoughts about his nasal hair. I was also still a little fixated by his spittle, the sight of which made me feel a little nauseous. “You boys...” he went on with ill-disguised relish, “…will stand outside my office in silence for the REST of the lunch hour. THEN I will decide what to do with you…”. The last part was left hanging in the air, as if everything up to and including public execution might be one of the options he was considering. I wouldn’t have put it past him. Trying my damnedest not to wet my short pants, with my two fellow criminals I dutifully made my way along the corridor, past the open door of the staff room and up to the wall adjacent to Mr. Barker’s small office, there to wait below a large and rather explicitly gory crucifix, for our fate to be decided.

Absolutely nobody has asked me to share my thoughts about the most pressing political and economic issue in Britain right now, so I thought I would get my revenge on you all.

Everything that follows is written from the point of view that a) I still have a great fondness for my country of birth and the people I know there, and b) I am firmly of the opinion that leaving the EU is an enormous mistake that will be regretted no matter how it comes about.

First, contrary to much that is written about jolly old England coming to the assistance of Johnny Foreigner in 1939, Britain (not just England) didn't act against Hitler purely out of a sense of 'doing the right thing'; quite correctly it was believed that the mad Austrian would one day try to invade Britain as well, despite his platitudes. Britain declared war just in time to be able to hold his forces at bay (with amazing bravery and fortitude) long enough to make useful strategic alliances. The courage of that generation should not be forgotten, but let's be honest about what happened, and why. Let’s also remind ourselves of just how long ago all that was, and how different the world is today.

The Germans have never lost sight of the horrors caused by that generation, and they have created a mighty economic machine from the rubble of their decimated country, even when it was so cruelly physically and culturally divided. They deserve credit for the reformation of their culture and economy, and for doing so as part of a greater, inclusive Europe. The war was over nearly 75 years ago; let it be.

Third, it's interesting to be reminded that the UK tried for ten years to join the EEC - I wonder why that was? Britain was bankrupted following the war, and genuinely needed to be part of the union in order to get the economic engines running again. The politicians of the time - flawed as they clearly were - understood the sense of that, and tried very hard to bring it about. Had that not happened, I suspect that Britain may today have ended up far lower down on the list of global economic powers. As things stand, it retains a seat within the G7. At least for now.

Next: the Brexit mess is one entirely of Britain's own making. The power-greedy right wing of the Tory party - and others - have propagated and encouraged xenophobia in order for individuals to satisfy their own desires. Myths about Britain’s might have been taken out of storage, burnished and presented as truth. History has been distorted to justify reasoning (always a disturbing tactic). Many of the 'Leave' arguments have been discredited along with the principles of how that campaign was conducted. The upshot of that was that voters did not get the chance to make a decision based upon truth, and instead did so having had their more base instincts - chiefly, fear of difference - well and truly agitated. How very sad. 1930s political strategies still have some uses, so it seems.

European countries do not, in my opinion, owe Britain any more favours. The war was a very long time ago, and the lessons of it (principally that fighting and division are in nobody’s best interest) are obvious to anyone willing to open their eyes. To keep Europe beholden to Britain's actions in 1939 would, I suggest, negate the essence of that mythical 'doing the right thing' for the sake of it (even if that was the case). You don't, after all, do the right thing just so you can - for ever and a day - remind others that they owe you.

There are calmer, sensible and even conciliatory arguments out there in Europe, but those voices tend not to be shouting when others are yelling from rooftops. The EU doesn't have to keep trying to pull its errant child along with it; let the tantrum happen and let's see what comes of it. Hopefully, a learning opportunity will arise from these particular ashes. Personally, I wish that more sensible heads would prevail and that the vote would be held again, with more facts to hand and a more clear vision of the consequences available to voters. I doubt that will happen, so as they say over here, it's probably time to suck it up, buttercup! I just hope that the British economy -and the well being of my family and friends still in Britain - can survive this whole sorry episode.

Seventeen years ago, I was a proud father watching my eldest child as he took part in his very first school sports day. I harboured traditional wishes for my son; I hoped that he would be successful in at least one of the day’s events, and that he would enjoy the feeling of achievement which so often accompanies a sporting win. He was a fast runner – just as I had been when I was a child – and the chances for success were, I thought, very high. He had many friends and he would surely be a popular winner, with – I hoped – some associated benefits for his self-esteem and confidence.

I watched, my heart thumping in my chest, as the group of boys slowly formed into a higgledy-piggledy starting line. I was there with him, vibrating with nerves (just as I always had when I too had stood on the start line so many times, so long before), disproportionately anxious that he should win. “Ready!” shouted the teacher, and my heart doubled its efforts. “Get set!” she called, and my legs trembled beneath me. “GO!” She dropped her arm, and they were off.Twelve sets of feet skipped across the lush green grass of an uneven English field. Small bodies responded to the demand for speed, and almost immediately, my son began to pull away from the pack. Jumping up and down on the spot, I watched with joy and then dismay as he shot towards the finish line but was rapidly overtaken by a small boy moving at a speed far in excess of that which was fair. The usurper passed my offspring and blazed across the line, a smouldering line of scorched grass in his wake.

Curses.

A few minutes later after ribbons and drinks had been handed around, I sat on the grass with my red-faced and slightly sweaty little trooper.“I thought you were going to win!” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage.“Yeah, me too.” he said, looking down and irritably pulling blades of grass out of the ground.“Oh well.” I said, the soul of fatherly wisdom. “Sometimes there are just faster runners out there ready to surprise you.”

I’d already lost him. He’d spotted a friend across the field, and in a trice was up and away to greet him. I smiled. Kids.Perhaps an hour later we were walking home after the afternoon’s activity and I wanted to make sure that second place hadn’t become a problem for my first born. “What was his name then?” I asked. “The little boy who won the race?”

Taken off guard, Anthony looked at me, puzzled. “Huh?”

Not in the mood to drag out the conversation any further, I tried to make it easy for him to remember what had happened. “What’s the little black boy’s name? The one who won the race?” Anthony stopped walking and looked at me, profound confusion written across his face. “Who daddy?” Mildly irritated, I tried again; “…the little black boy. He was really fast, wasn’t he?” My son looked at me as if he was dealing with an idiot. “Do you mean Eko?” “Is that his name? Eko?” Obviously still questioning my sanity, Anthony nodded. “Eko won the race, daddy, but…” and he shook his head as if to rid himself of an annoying insect; “…Eko isn’t black!”

He continued to walk home, leaving me to stare after him as the truth dawned on me. Anthony had no idea that his new friend Eko – his family having arrived from Ghana only weeks before – was different in any way. At five years old, he didn’t see the difference between himself and Eko (although Eko did have a troubling tendency to run very fast indeed). At the age of five, he was wiser than I.

I had just begun the ruination of that beautiful condition. With one clumsy question, I’d begun the construction of a difference between my son and his friend; one that until that moment he hadn’t been aware of – and in a perfect world would never need to be aware of.

I shared my experience with a black colleague and friend the next day. By the end of the story, we were both in tears. In different ways we had both witnessed a beautiful part of a human’s nature, and we were both intensely aware that it – just as Eko’s brown skin had been to Anthony – had hitherto been invisible and unknown. I’d ruined it.

So much of what our society teaches us could – or should - remain forever unknown…some things we need never become aware of.

Domestic accidents come in many shapes and sizes and I’ve had my fair share. During my life, I have also come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from the mewling babe-in-arms to the small-for-his age schoolboy all the way to the oversized I-wish-I-had-more-clothes-that-still-fit-me incarnation of the present day. My domestic accidents through the years have had a wide range of causes, but most have involved bleeding.

Among certain physiological traits (e.g. a mildly cleft chin, the family backside), my father bequeathed me other things. One of them is a genuine talent for drawing blood when performing the most mundane and non-injurious domestic task. I can quite easily, for example, end up interestingly injured after performing any gardening job, vehicle repair (I have to fix the brakes on the truck soon, and I don’t relish the idea) or even merely moving items from one room to another.

Cooking (and proximity to those pesky sharp knives) has taught me many bloody lessons over the decades, to the point where the overwhelming majority of meals I cook these days are free from any of my haemoglobin. These days I’m pretty safe around knives.

Yesterday’s offering, for example, promised to be a bloodless, injury-free meal that I have prepared many times ( a Bolognese sauce paired with a spaghetti squash, for the curious). Our little house was filled with the heady aromas of herbs and garlic coming together like old friends, and all that remained was for me to prepare the squash. It sounds easy enough. It seemed easy enough.

So, when the football-sized squash exploded in my face, it was something of a surprise. A shock, even. “Argh!” I shouted helpfully as the squash gave up its structural integrity in a very sudden and immediate fashion, accompanied by a sound which – to my best recollection – was a mixture of a “Whump!” with a hint of “Pop!” and a smidgen of “Kablooey!”. In fairness, I was distracted at the time by the boiling squash matter spattering my face, my glasses and the exposed skin offered up courtesy of my Tee-shirt.

“Well, that was different.” I thought, as my wife leapt from her chair and towards the ‘fridge for some ice. “I’m OK! I’M OK!” I yelled through my new attractive veil of stringy squash matter, my priority suddenly being a need to avoid ice cubes being applied by my lovely lady with her usual enthusiasm for such things. I’d no idea if I was actually OK, I just knew that I didn’t want ice cubes. Anywhere.

The ensuing little dance around the kitchen to the tune of my wife yelling “Take your shirt off!” gave me just enough time to check my sensors for signs of damage, to thoroughly alarm our elderly neighbours, and then to convince my would-be Florence Nightingale that the application of freezing things was not required. Her raised eyebrow, however, betrayed a certain level of skepticism. Today’s interesting blister on the inside of my right arm may just indicate that she had a point.

Under normal conditions, I would shy away from writing an end-of-year reflective piece, but my condition is not normal. That’s to say, it isn’t the condition I had become used to, although I may have to accept it as my new ‘normal’.Many things have changed during 2018. I began the year believing that I had – at some point in 2017 – suffered a stroke which was causing the problems I was experiencing with the sight in my left eye. I was wrong about that, just as I’d been wrong to ignore my developing battery of symptoms for so long. I’d been scared of what I might discover about my health if I investigated matters. I’d been a fool.

In 2018 I learned – and I’m still learning – how to go about accepting what is. That, I think, has been one of the major lessons of the journey that my family and I have been on. Things – regardless of how I might feel – have changed, and there is little that I can do about many of the changes that have arrived to test my endurance or patience. I must instead accept them.

For much of my life I have lived within a dichotomy; a shy, oversized man employed in roles which required me to behave forcefully and confidently. A large and (yes, I must accept this) strong man capable of being proficient in various sports, and of using my physical power to be useful in a wide variety of situations which might cause difficulties to anyone smaller or less strong than I. These things have changed. I must accept a physically reduced version of who I once was. I must accept those things of which I am no longer capable. I must accept the word ‘disability’ as it now pertains to me.

I’ve learned this year how much my physical stature and strength was part of what helped me survive emotionally. As that physical strength has been stripped away, my emotions have been laid bare, my vulnerability visible (it has seemed) for all to see. My lack of emotional strength has been painfully apparent as, at various times of the year, I’ve leaned so heavily upon my wife’s remarkable depth of love for me. I’ve become aware of it, and accepted the truth of it. It has always been who I really am.

2019 sees a different person looking out at the world from this familiar-looking face. The face in the mirror looks much the same (a little more grey, a little fatter, a little more tired) but I’m not the same; I couldn’t be.

Counter-intuitively perhaps, the easiest response would be to fight against the difference; to try to regain what I once had and to try to be who I once believed I was. The harder course is the one that I am choosing, because I believe that wisdom lies along the way. I choose to embrace the difference and to rebuild my small world in acceptance of who I am now. I’m assisted by the fact that my new community has never known the previous version of me, and so there is little or no pressure to revert from the people who have met only this version of me.

My partner in life, and my children know, of course. What, I wonder, is this like for them? What is it like to see a person they love changed in this kind of way?

What is it like, and how, now, can I – with all the love I hold for them - help them?

It’s sometimes hard to know where to lay - and how to express - one’s frustration, disappointment and downright anger when the medical world lets us down. Recently - with some reservations, because health workers have a difficult, under-appreciated role - I provided the local major hospital with a list of disappointments (I left out the minor ones and concentrated on the major, including the permanent effects upon my physical health) and had hoped to have put that unfortunate series of events behind me. However, it seems that consequences of my earlier illness have not yet finished tweaking my future.

The latter I can understand and with a smidgen of curmudgeonly reluctance, even accept. Health, once disrupted, can become a fragile thing, subject to the whims and fancy of a cold, unfeeling universe. So be it. This is the hand I’ve been dealt, and it’s a lot better than many. But…

My health – specifically, the workings of my until recently taken-for-granted pituitary gland – is no longer to be relied upon. My surgeries in the spring of this year saved me from an expanding tumour at the base of my brain (cozying up, as it was, to my pituitary), but placed in jeopardy the long-term viability of that important little lump of flesh. Sigh. OK. That exchange seemed a fair gamble to make. No complaints about the nature of the treatment; there was no realistic choice.

But now. NOW…almost twelve months after first meeting with an allegedly esteemed endocrinologist, we have learned that he has failed to inform us of some extremely pertinent issues which not infrequently rear their heads after such an illness and treatment. These issues – I’m ragingly angry to discover – constitute a real and present danger to my health (even, in extremis, to my life) if left unrecognized and untreated. The fact that he has mentioned nothing of them is little short of negligent, and yet it follows in a series of similarly egregious disappointments which have left me bewildered and divested of my previous confidence in the medical profession.

My confidence in doctors is severely dented. Dented, but – amazingly, in retrospect – not yet shattered. My surgeon was obviously a skilled person, and he was open and honest about what he was going to be doing, and the risks of doing it. In other words, he was what I hoped for and expected. The after-care has been what’s shocked and disappointed me. Not only held against what I think should be the very highest standards reserved for health care, but frankly held against any reasonable standards of competence. If I had ever dropped the ball so badly in any of the jobs that I’ve had, I’d have expected to be fired. This, however, is messing around with my life and not just the quality of it, but the extent of it.

Mostly because I have a stake in such matters, my thoughts not infrequently turn to the idea of why diseases such as diabetes remain uncured. I'm not a medically trained person (indeed, some would say that I'm barely house-trained) and neither do I have a background in chemistry or biology, but I have been fortunate to receive a good education, and I've kept my eyes and ears open for the last fifty-something years.

The western world is increasingly steered and partially controlled by enormous and often sinister multinational commercial interests, and some of the largest of those commercial interests happen to be...drug companies. Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I'm also not averse to disbelieving the propaganda that the public is fed by politicians and vested interest groups. I know that my thoughts on this subject may sound a little out there but I'm not trying to convince anyone, I’m merely offering up the thoughts that occur to me as I ponder my own medical situation.

Some observations I have made include:

Medicines for chronic conditions tend to be among the most expensive for the customer to purchase. I know this from my inside knowledge of the pharmaceutical retail sector.

Drug manufacturers exist and thrive off a seemingly endless demand for their existing products – so, what motivation do they have to fund CURES? It would be like producing the everlasting gobstopper; a product which makes itself redundant.

By definition, chronic diseases are a reliable source of demand for the drug manufacturer's supply. Sounds creepy, but in business terms, it's a simple truth.

Regular stories of 'breakthroughs' in clinical research seem to fade away with time and rarely if ever lead to the promised results.

Watching USA cable channel pharmaceutical commercials, the lists of potential side effects of most of the products on offer are so mind-boggling as to utterly defy the common sense notion that the drugs have been deemed safe for use. And yet, we buy them.

It seems that death is good for business - the drug business. Death provides the fear factor, the motivation for people to seek out chemical remedies for their symptoms - to seek instant fixes for issues which may not be fixable, to keep at bay the grim reaper while maintaining every other element of a lifestyle which in all probability is connected in some way to the cause of our symptoms. We are not encouraged by western culture to seek out reasons or causes; au contraire, we are instead told to deal merely with the symptoms. By doing so, we stay on the hook for never-ending courses of drugs.

The brutal truth is that the companies who provide drugs have no economic reason to push genuine research into cures for the modern scourges, but have a great deal of incentive to keep customers needing medication. The gravy train, it would seem, never stops rolling.

What this means is that sickness and suffering is the cost of doing business - our cost, their business.

Ever since I was a shorts-wearing, blotchy-skinned, knock-ankled (most people had knock knees; I did things differently and had the special shoes to prove it) freckled child, I have been a car nerd. I only stopped (or put the brakes on…see what I – never mind…) being a car nerd when I left the country of my birth in 2002 and arrived in the land of enormous engines (‘motors’) and roads without many corners or bends to disrupt their flow across the continent. The time once existed when I could identify a model of a car by the smallest piece of evidence (which occasionally came in useful during my former career), a knack which fed into my love of all things automotive.

Such truths only make it more strange that, once unleashed upon the world with a salary and pockets for it to burn holes into, I embarked upon satiating an apparent compulsion to purchase a succession of what we in England used to refer to as ‘sheds’. Sheds as in not very useful as cars, and frequently static. Sheds as in ugly, strange-smelling places. Sheds as in – on one troubling occasion – populated mostly by spiders and mice.

What I was doing, of course, was approaching the art of car buying from the wrong angle: desire. The first car I bought lasted less than two hours in my possession, and was returned to the dealership before it – and my horrified father - spontaneously combusted. But it looked good…I fell in love with my first permanent car because it too looked gorgeous, albeit in a 1970s way (so: not gorgeous at all). It took only two days to firstly break down and then - on the same day - run itself into a concrete bollard (a long story which I don’t have the space to include here; best buy my book then…). ’Twas an omen, my friends.

There then followed many years of appalling vehicular choices (punctuated by one glorious interlude which I naturally had to ruin by selling the darned thing for a stupid reason) and the disappearance of an alarming amount of money while I pursued my four-wheeled and two-wheeled urges. Rarely did I make a reasoned, sensible choice and even when I did, things tended to figuratively - and often literally - fall apart.

Middle age brought with it one last mighty spasm of automotive torture (an Audi) before things finally settled down a few years ago. Finally, I said to myself, I’ve served my time. I’ve at last arrived at a place where I have a car I enjoy and can have faith in. Like a fool, however, I’d reckoned without the cruel humour of the automotive gods. Like a blinkered idiot, I’d overlooked the demise of fossil fuels and its associated technology. The result is that after all this time and all those struggles with bruised knuckles, oily rags and wet driveways, I find myself staring down the barrel of the truth. Gasoline is dead. My beloved car – my all-time favourite – is obsolete.

I’m a dinosaur, I know. I carry no huge bony plates upon my back, my neck isn’t twelve feet long, and my arms are neither too short nor puny for me to be able to pick my nose, but I am from another time.

My life could, however, be split into different epochs, much like the Jurassic, Devonian or Cambrian (and if they’re in the wrong chronological order, I shall huffily claim that such was my original intent).

In my case, first came the racist epoch. I was raised in a very white household in a very white part of England. I can still remember the first time I saw a black person in my home town, because as a child of eight, I stopped and stared. My parents (and therefore the rest of us) regularly used racial slurs in conversation, told one another racist jokes and laughed at overtly racist comedy on TV (there was a lot of it on TV in England in the 60s and 70s). And then, one day, I met a person of colour. Finished.

Then there was the homophobic epoch, which also began in childhood (once again in the parental home) and was nurtured in the poisonous atmosphere of single-sex education. It persisted into my late 20s, when the universe gave me a good shake to show me some sense. That shake came in the form of two gay neighbours (whom I had immediately regarded with a mix of suspicion and dismissive contempt), who, to my surprise, turned out to be two of the kindest and warm-hearted people I had ever met. Prejudice finished.

The sexism epoch arose from fear. Having been utterly comfortable in the company of girls as an elementary school kid (apart from that time, aged seven, when Mandy Thompson told everyone who could hear that she would be sick on me if I kissed her), during my adolescent years and that single-sex schooling, things changed. I became terrified of girls, and the potential for rejection by them. As I grew older, I avoided contact with females (especially the ones I found attractive), and regarded them as unreachable and beyond understanding. When I fell in love for the first time, those blinkers began to shrink away from my eyes. Prejudice finished.

Now, in my mid-fifties, I face another opportunity to learn. I speak of my mild confusion – if that’s the right word – around current attitudes towards gender; I’ve always been slow off the mark. The issue isn’t my understanding that gender is a far more fluid and dynamic concept than I was ever taught; I have learned that my map of the world was not the world. The difficulty I experience – and I get it that many, many people are way ahead of me on this – is that my instincts are still programmed for a two-gender world.

I see someone dressed in traditionally male garb, and my instincts say: “That’s a man.” Likewise for someone wearing what I identify as traditionally female clothing: “That’s a woman.” It has nothing to do with my respect for a person’s gender identity, and everything to do with fifty-plus years of social conditioning. I’m not sure that this can be judged; it simply is. My instinctive responses - which happen before thought - are beyond my control, although with time, and my immersion in a new, more inclusive society, I’m optimistic that things – like my racism, sexism and homophobia – will change. But from time to time, as I make progress with this, I know I’m going to screw up.

My hope is that my relatively minor difficulty will not be misinterpreted as some kind of ‘anti’ prejudice. This is still a new concept for me. It’s a new thing for my reptile brain (I told you I’m a dinosaur) to learn about and – here’s the crux of it: to become accustomed to.

Most changes in my life have dawned upon me retrospectively – that is; the realisation that I have changed tends to come into my awareness some time after it takes place. This helps me be optimistic about adapting to change now and in the future, and I’m resigned to living the idea of: ‘I’ll know it’s real when it’s been happening for some time without me noticing.’. I’m sure that my old ideas about gender will evolve to meet the reality of our world; they have to. While I’m waiting for the process to complete, I need to be aware of the possibility of unintentionally offending some people through my momentary lapses of awareness.

While I write the blog for the enjoyment of it, I'm also trying to become a professional writer who can support himself through such work. I know, I know - sad isn't it? Pathetic, even. But that's the truth of it, and short of kidnapping you and forcing you to log into Amazon and buy a copy of my book (there's another one almost ready to publish)...although, I haven't actually tried that yet...hmmmm, hold that thought...

...where was I? Oh yes; here are the links through which you can purchase the 500+ page book for only a few dollars/pounds. I think that's bloody good value, but I'm biased, so what do I know? Go on, treat yourself for Christmas...

Ignore the hardback version. The paperback represents reasonable value, but the e-book is a stonking bargain if you ask me. Beware, there is a photo of me on several of these links.

In a typical situation, it’s the most casual of questions, the response almost irrelevant and hardly ever heard. I know that I’m guilty of it; I’ll ask the question and already be moving along to the next sentence before the reply reaches me. Frequently, the response is the same question coming straight back at me. Lately, I’ve been slipping back into the glib, largely meaningless reply – perhaps not too surprising, since I’ve done it almost my entire life. Nevertheless, every time I throw out my trusty “Fine thanks, how’re you doin’?”, a little part of me pulls the same face I reserve for bad smells. I disappoint myself each time.

Today, for example, someone greeted me with the question, and I replied with the reply. Even as I said it, I regretted it. Firstly, it was a lie, and secondly it dawned on me almost immediately that the question was genuine. I was forced to do that most un-English of things, and actually share something of my genuine feelings in person. Generations of emotionally stunted ancestors spun like dynamos in their graves as I braced myself and shared the fact that at that particular time, I really wasn’t feeling too good.

My reward was a brightening of my day. A brief, interrupted conversation it may only have been, but I discovered that this person – an acquaintance but still a relative stranger – actually cared about my reply. I felt a little ashamed about almost brushing off the enquiry with such little regard, but much more than that; I felt warmed and gladdened by the honest concern for my well-being. It made me feel better.

It made me reflective, too. I realized with a small shock, that I very rarely answer that particular question honestly. Not – bizarrely - even to my doctor! I don’t, however, think that this is something unique to this middle-aged Englishman (yes, I’m Canadian but culturally, I’m still English). I’ve been in this beautiful land for many years now, and in my experience, most of us (if not all of us) tend to behave in a similar way. Greetings are words that we habitually throw at one another like snowballs; ephemeral, almost meaningless and rapidly forgotten. Anything more communicative can be confusing, but perseverance can open up another world – and not necessarily as alarming as an immigrant Englishman may find it - of meaningful, emotional living.

It reminds me that communication is as much about listening as it is about what we say. If we truly listen, we may discover previously unknown facets of our surroundings. My discovery was that a person I know only a little genuinely cares about me. I find that rather moving, and it has the welcome side-effect of snapping me out of my habitual grumpiness. Perhaps (cue: sarcastic gasp of surprise) the world is less uncooperative or unpleasant than I sometimes assume!

Hmmm…

I’m going to have to do some more listening to find out what other revelations may be waiting for me…

I don’t plan on having a headstone. I’ve never visited my grandparents’ graves – in fact, I don’t even know where they are. I have seen – in photographs - but never visited the site of my father’s ashes interment. The reason? I don’t see the point. I know that my father or other deceased relatives are not in the ground to be aware of me standing there talking to them. My grandparents never met me (having all, with spectacularly poor timing, died before I arrived in the world), so they wouldn’t recognise me anyway. My personal beliefs are such that I find no comfort standing at a graveside. If I did so, I don’t believe that they could know I was there or hear whatever I had to say and neither can I imagine their voices speaking to me.

This leaves me with scant reason for having my surviving loved ones go to the trouble and expense of finding and purchasing a headstone. I find them universally dark, unfriendly things anyway. The only exception I’m aware of is from Spike Milligan, who went to a lot of trouble to have “I told you I was ill’ inscribed for all the world to see. I love that, but if I’m honest, I think it’s impossible to equal.

So, what to do? Well; nothing. And that’s partly the point.

However, if I was to indulge myself and put money aside for a chunk of bedrock with some words upon it to commemorate my existence, I may just choose to go the curmudgeonly route (I was going to say “…and be damned.”, but I don’t believe in that either). If I could get them past the censors overseeing the Garden of Remembrance for Deceased Curmudgeons, I might try for one or more of the following:

“A car has BRAKES, not BREAKS”

“The $ sign goes BEFORE the numbers…”

“There, Their, They’re. Where, Were, We’re. Your, You’re.”

“Learn about apostrophes.”

“A Lot, NOT A lot.”

“For Ever can be two words.”

In the interests of practicality, I’d need a whole new (wasteful) stone upon which to address my pet driving peeves, and a whole tomb (if not a chapel) to begin dealing with issues deriving from politics.

Three years ago, I visited Westminster Abbey in London, and there I came across the tomb markers for such giants as Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Alexander Pope and Charles Darwin. To stand in the presence of such markers was a surprisingly moving and even exciting experience. However, I’m not famous, and I never shall be. The people who remember me will have known me, liked me and loved me (or not, I suppose). I doubt that they will need a physical reminder of my existence. I hope instead to leave behind many happy memories, no regrets and a few books (one down, how many left to go?) to mark my life.

I hope to be remembered, and I hope those memories shall allow those who know me to smile and reflect upon a life well-lived. Just don’t expect a headstone; it might spoil things.

I can remember a time before TV remote controls; a time before VCRs (never mind any other recording device, the acronyms for which I shall not attempt to remember here) or DVD – I got that one right - and Blu-Ray players. It was a time when TV sets occupied large wooden boxes which were large enough to take up an entire corner of the living room, when switching a TV on meant turning a knob, then sauntering back to the settee, completing a jigsaw puzzle and reading a short novel before the valves had warmed up enough for a picture to be visible on the screen. It was a simple time, and – in the UK at least – it was awful.

We had three channels when I was a kid. To make matters worse, we were only allowed to watch either BBC1 or BBC2 when my father was in the house. He regarded the third channel – ITV – with the kind of suspicion Donald Trump might reserve for a lawyer with a microphone in their button hole. TV programming – don’t let the oldies fool you, kids – was best characterized as terrible, with occasional outbreaks of entertainment. As children, we sat before the glowing box with a kind of stoic belligerence, daring the set to brighten our evenings, often in vain.

Remote control devices were quite large compared to our modern versions; they were warm, fleshy, clothes-wearing and were referred to by the names of the youngest people in the household. They were typically voice-activated (clever, huh?) and responded to commands such as “Leo, put it on BBC2.” Or “Turn the sound up so your dad can hear the football results.”, but apart from a brief delay brought on by adolescent truculence or inertia, they tended to be rather reliable.

Not so in my experience these days. I have a troubled relationship with most things electrical – in fact I seem to live by one of the lesser-known laws of physics; that which states that the reduction of moving parts in a device is inversely proportional to its reliability. I can’t, for example, keep track of the number of remote controls I have owned for the TV, DVD, Blu-Ray, PVR (I just dragged that one out of my memory) or the cable box. I may be cursed, but it’s a mightily specific hex.

Recently, however, the solid state gods have been smiling upon me. My current TV remote (let’s call him Reg) is a marvel. In fact, he seems to go from strength to strength no matter what I do. Held together with short strips of electrical tape, Reg has the structural integrity (and feel) of a bag of potato chips, but he refuses to stop working. Many pieces of Reg have been swept up and discarded following unintentional interfaces with the floor, but he keeps on keeping on. I cannot break him. Reg transcends the curse!

It rather makes me wish that I was still the household TV remote control unit…

Ten things which, thanks to the internet, I have discovered I don't care about today:

1. Johnny Depp opening up about playing Grindewald. 2. The source of the rift between Kanye and...well, anybody...He's obviously not very well, let's not stare at him while he struggles with his state of mind.3. Celebrities who didn't show up to the recent royal wedding. They sound like sensible people already.4. Any news connected with baseball, hockey or football (of any kind). 5. Melania Trump talking. About anything. She is irrelevant.6. How the cast of 'The Big Bang Theory' looks in real life. I'm going to stick my neck out and guess that they merely wear different clothes and have slightly altered hair.7. Stephen Harper (Canada's former prime minister in case you've never heard of him - you didn't miss much) talking about how great he was/is/was/is...was...8. Duchess of somewhere narrowly avoiding a wardrobe malfunction. Obviously, nothing happened, and even if it had...9. 50 foods I should never eat. Next year they will be 'must-eat' foods.10. Anything to do with Meghan, Duchess of Harry.

Patriotism is a strange subject for this immigrant to think about. The matter used to be very black and white for me; Rule Britannia, God Save the Queen and serving my community with no little pride as a first responder under an oath of allegiance to the monarch. Leaving the land of my birth and upbringing was a series of steps away from that way of thinking; steps which began with witnessing at first hand the amount of effort and public money spent every time a member of the royal family (or for that matter, a high-ranking politician) set foot in ‘the provinces’. As a member of the escort team, I saw extraordinarily privileged and/or rich people being presented with trunk-loads of gifts simply for turning up at a venue. Inevitably, my feelings about my country slowly began to change.

My former home was tired, and much of that society either didn’t work at all, or was showing its age. Moving to a new country became an exciting adventure rather than – as it sometimes felt - some kind of betrayal of old values, and bringing my young children to a place where they could be more free (and by extension, happier) turned into an aspirational goal. We would become Canadians.

Surprisingly, despite having prepared myself for it, leaving Britain was still a wrench. Mostly, I felt sad at leaving behind my oldest friends, but I also left behind everything that was familiar - everything that was comfortable - and that too was hard. Any sense of disquiet was overcome by the excitement of arriving in a new country that we would call home, and Canada rapidly became our favourite place on earth.

Many years later, we are all, indeed, Canadians – we have pieces of paper to prove it. Am I, though, patriotic about this enormous place? If I’m honest, not in the same way that I used to be about my hereditary birthplace - but then, my ideas about patriotism - along with my ideas about my country of birth - have evolved. Blind patriotism is the sibling of nationalism, and neither is a force for good (witness the worst excesses of the redneck American flag-wavers/wearers). There is much about Canada to be proud of, but as for every country, things which we prefer to pretend never happened. Sometimes we are successful in keeping them quiet, although dark secrets, I find, only tend to fester. The appalling scandal of the Residential Schools system will linger – quite rightly - for generations to come.

I am proud of much that Canada stands for on the world stage today (the recent disagreement with the evil regime in Saudi Arabia and refusing to back down in Trump-initiated trade negotiations being examples), and I am pleased and proud to identify as a Canadian, despite my English accent. I feel protective of Canada, of BC and of our little island in a calm, shimmering sea. But, I know the lady (Canada) has flaws.

If anyone (including old friends) claims these days that their country is better, I’m liable to make a farting sound with my lips and tongue (quicker and easier than pesky words, I find), but I’m mindful of the mistakes – some of them terrible, even horrifying – that were made in our history, both ancient and modern. We are not alone. Name me a country without a troubled past, and I’ll give you five with blood on the walls. Canada is no exception to the latter. It’s an ugly side of human nature which we seem unable to escape; the strong will, inevitably, overwhelm the less strong or the peaceful. Cultures will be ridden over and erased, replaced with whatever the strong wish to impose. We are a violent species.

Conquest is a nasty, horrific, messy business. Boasting about it (cue: the imperialism live and well in English ‘Gentleman’s Clubs’ or that redneck flag-waving habit of our neighbours) is simply shitty and un-evolved.

Glorifying patriotism as a virtue is a kind of madness I wish we could overwhelm and utterly eradicate. In fact, while we’re at it, why not simply recognize patriotism as the root of so much evil, which it clearly has been and continues to be?

All too soon, the nation’s thoughts will turn to yet another general election (cue sardonic and feeble “Hooraaay”) and of course the economy will take centre stage. In my fevered imagination, however, ‘economy’ triggers thoughts of other things…flying, for example.Staying on our tiny island is a great option at any time, especially when travel further afield (for example to the land of my birth) has become less and less edifying. Flying ‘economy’ class has come to mean many unpleasant, teeth-grinding things:

It means a seat not designed for anyone larger than half my size.It means a TV screen that is at exactly the right distance from my eyes to make focusing upon it impossible.It means the previous occupant of my seat having locked the in-flight entertainment system in Icelandic.It means being entirely unable to use the system (in any language) when the person(or: twat) in front of me reclines their seat until their hair is in my face.It means having the back of my seat repeatedly jerked backwards by the weak-bladdered passenger (or: fucker)behind me.It means having a fold down 'table' cunningly designed to be the perfect size to accommodate nothing of any use.It means trying to force useful things (sandwich, chocolate bar, water bottle) into a seat pocket obviously designed to hold only a single moist towelette.It means being offered 'food' which uses that word in an entirely new way.‘Economy’ means sitting underneath an overhead locker which contains a bag belonging to the world's most restless man (or: dickhead) sitting six rows behind me.It means having a close-up view of his trouser crotch area on each of the many occasions he visits the locker to look for that important doohickey. He’s always disappointed.Flying ‘economy’ means having my shoulder knocked an average of 37 times each flight, either by robust flight attendants or more robust passengers who seemingly need to visit the bathroom every 13 minutes.It means that I share a tiny bathroom with at least forty people (or: arseholes), one of whom manages to beat me to the toilet every time and leave unpleasant evidence of their visit on the seat, in the toilet bowl and – bewilderingly - paper towels spread around like confetti – oh; I nearly forgot the liquid soap on every surface above hip level.It means that, with an impatient passenger (arsehole) hopping about outside the door, I am forced to clean up someone else's mess to avoid the accusing, blaming eyes of my fellow passenger (arsehole) after they’ve kindly dislocated my shoulder on the way back to their seat. The bastard.

Finally, flying economy means the unnerving knowledge that the flight attendants hate me. No matter how bright their smiles, how fluttery their eyelashes, I can see the contempt in their eyes as they welcome me and my protruding shoulders on board, offer me a complimentary drink or slide a tray of unrecognizable ‘nutrients’ onto my postage-stamp sized tray table. I never dare to think about pressing the call button…

It's funny how things can suddenly take over your thoughts, isn't it? Well, maybe not yours, but certainly mine. A ten minute 'surf' of inconsequential stuff today jumped up, slapped me about the face, tweaked my nose, made me feel quite odd for a few seconds and then settled down again.

In the course of my meanderings I had, you see, come across an article about the 1980s and the ever-present threat that the cold war posed to global well-being. I was still a child (but only just) as the eighties began, and while it was certainly an interesting decade in many respects (the dawn of colourful clothing in Britain!), the continuing threat of very silly people pressing buttons and bringing death down upon us remained very real.

I first became aware of the threat of nuclear conflict/obliteration in the early to mid seventies, mostly through the things that occasionally popped up on TV and snippets of discussions overheard in the family. Phrases such as 'the four minute warning' and being ready to climb under our desks became part of our lives in those days. Occasionally, old World War II air raid sirens, still in use for much the same purpose, would be tested, and send a chill of fear through us all for several minutes. I grew up on a small peninsula within sight of the once bustling but still important port of Liverpool, a few more miles from one of the country's largest oil refineries, and forty five minutes from two airports. It was reasonable to assume that if some grey-suited idiot thousands of miles away chose to kill us all, our part of the world would be among the priority targets for the enemy (whoever that really was).

It's hard to convey how that felt - as a child, in particular. It was certainly unlike anything my parents faced as the high explosive and incendiary bombs fell around and upon their homes during the Second World War - we didn't have that shocking reality of immediate death and destruction to deal with. My generation only grew up wondering...wondering if the leaders of the world were really that stupid, and if one day a mushroom cloud over Liverpool would herald the end of everything. We never had to face the horrors of ‘total’ war on our own doorstep as my parents had done, we didn't have to witness the real barbarism of humans willfully murdering others. What we dealt with was not knowing, and in my case, not trusting stuffy old men (and one very strong-willed woman in particular) in suits, who said silly things and rattled sabres with gusto while knowing full well that their families would be safe in bunkers if all hell broke loose.

Famously, we in the general population had been fed the line that told us all to - in the event of the alarms going off - rip off an interior door, lie it against an interior, load-bearing wall of the house, provision it for up to two weeks of survival and then climb underneath. Writing it now has me chuckling at the ludicrous prospect of anyone trying to do that. A family, plus provisions for two weeks under one door - and by the way, that was to be accomplished within four minutes. I don't how many people bought that nonsense (I know that I did at the age of eight or nine, at least for a while, until I began to think critically) but it was all that the government of the day offered for advice. As a young police officer I was entrusted with certain information about local civil defence, public order provisions and survival infrastructure. Without breaching any security protocols, I can reveal that what was envisioned and planned for the population was not exactly encouraging.

My memories of the 70s and 80s, filled with the stuff of childhood and adolescence as they are, remain tinged with the shadow of real fear that loomed over me even as I used to walk my old dog along Hoylake beach, stare apprehensively at the distant waterfront of Liverpool and wonder if that day would be THE day when the world went mad; if that was the day when I might blink and open my eyes upon a towering mushroom cloud.​It may seem strange to say it, but I’m glad that I have these memories. Dark though they may be, I wouldn’t wish them away, for they give me a perspective about where I now find myself. I’m an ocean and a continent away from my old home town, and half a lifetime away from those days of fear and foreboding. I live among beauty, and peace. My horizons today are filled with mountains, and hope. Even allowing for the nonsense of modern politics, we have come through those days with an intention never to return. We have produced a generation which may learn from our mistakes without repeating them (and boy, did we – and do we still - make some mistakes). I have faith in an educated society which may learn from the past, from our growth in knowledge and which may fulfill the hopes of its under-achieving parents (i.e. myself and anyone else willing to accept responsibility).

The future looks much brighter to me than the past (even though we really did have some very colourful clothing in the 80s), and sometimes it’s nice to have that contrast to help me appreciate my good fortune.

The world returned in a jumble of noise; my name being shouted, some words, and a confused image of a vaguely familiar face. It was chaotic, alarming and disturbing for a second or maybe more, but much later, I remembered recognizing and acknowledging the face and saying ‘OK’. I think. The world blinked out again.

My eyes opened – properly this time – onto a new room (or the same room from a different angle). Two people were at my bedside, calling me. With an effort I looked at each of them. Things were in contact with my head and my face, and breathing was difficult. Time had passed without me.

For the second time in my life, I’d been anaesthetized for an extended period, and it had passed in the blink of an eye. I didn’t remember blackness. I hadn’t dreamt; there had simply been suddenly nothing, and then suddenly wakefulness. It was a new sensation, and while I would much rather have been unconscious while the surgeons did their thing, I initially found it unaccountably disturbing.

The waking-up part was (the second time around) uncomfortable and surprisingly difficult, but my sense of disquiet emanates more from my first and significantly more protracted surgery. The problem is that it has left me with large blocks of missing memory, both from immediately before I went into the operating theatre, and from the two or three hours afterwards. I have only one memory from waking up that first time, and that is – thankfully – of seeing my wife and daughter at my side, and speaking briefly to them. Everything else is simply absent.

Absence; my point (finally).

Falling asleep is familiar to all of us – most of us do it at least once each day, without any terror of not being conscious and in full and immediate control of our destiny. We have to do it; without it we eventually die, and in a rather unpleasant way, too. Falling asleep is natural, and often we approach the onset of losing consciousness with enthusiasm. We dream, some remember our dreams (I do, but only for a very short time) and some don’t. I often have at least some kind of sense of the passage of time between falling asleep and waking. But anaesthesia is different. There is simply awake, and then waking without realizing that consciousness had left. It’s confusing and disorienting. There is no perceived passage of time.​This makes me wonder if the death that we all must experience one day is in any way similar in terms of our perception. Do we simply ‘flick out’, as I remember doing? Are we, then, just suddenly absent? If so, we have nothing to fear from death. A state of merely not being holds no pain or suffering; no sorrow or regret. No loneliness. The pain of loss is felt by the living, and in particular the loving and the loved. We who remain suffer, while the dead are merely absent and unknowing.

No really, it is. Leaving aside the fact that ‘being sick’ means – in the land of my birth and first thirty seven years of life – almost exclusively, vomiting (or if you prefer: barfing, making a pavement pizza, yelling into the the big white telephone), being sick is a strange place to find oneself. Unless a person is frequently unwell (in which case my heart goes out to them), finding oneself incapacitated and unable to do a great deal about it in a short time frame can be perplexing, frustrating, frightening and, well…extremely strange.

I’ve been lucky, in my fifty three years, to have mostly enjoyed good health. My body has typically behaved itself (we’ll overlook the whole type one diabetes misunderstanding) and overall, my mind and the oversized lump that carries it around have been good friends. They have, for the most part, understood and cooperated with one another. This situation makes the whole ‘becoming seriously ill’ thing rather perplexing and not a little confusing. Somebody (and I’m not pointing the finger here), somewhere, went off-message.

Without wishing to play the blame game, I’ve found myself wondering not only why this has happened, but how. Gaining an intellectual understanding of the ‘how’ certainly helped me come to terms with the misfiring of my mind-transporting device, but I have remained somewhat unsynchronized emotionally. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to be seriously ill (I don’t recall placing the order for this disruption), and catching up with it has been problematic.

Two main issues remain: firstly, simply accepting that it is real. Being ill – as in properly ill – was something I grew up believing always happened to someone else. After all, in all the books I read, all the movies I watched as a kid, the hero (me, naturally) was never the one who became ill or died. Death could be cheated, held off and with the correct combination of noble intent and rugged good looks, avoided almost for ever. I grew up, therefore, with a belief that it probably wouldn’t ever happen to me. Now admittedly, I am neither noble nor ruggedly good looking. I have a lifetime of learning experiences behind me, but please don’t overlook the possibility that I am either a) very stupid, or b) emotionally immature. Or, if you’re feeling vindictive: c) both.

Secondly, I have still to come to terms with recovering in a way that is less than spectacular. As much as I might wish it, I’m not going to bounce back from my illness very quickly. Not for me the Pluto-greets-Mickey-home-from-work kind of energy levels – no, no; things are instead moving along at a sedated Droopy-who-hasn’t-had-his-coffee-yet kind of pace. I want the former, but I’m stuck with the latter. That makes me mad (I told you: Droopy). My one-step-at-a-time recovery consists of short steps and extended pauses. I’ll know I am getting better when my paces become longer and my pauses shorter, but I suppose I must wait for that to happen, dammit...